Truth, but... (for @sfj1642 )

Sorry, but if you decide to have kids, you pay for them yourself. Why should I subsidise your lifestyle choices?

-- sfj1642 on twitter

In a sane world, that would be a perfectly reasonable point of view. Unfortunately, back here in the real world, the fact of the matter is this: those kids will one day be paying your (state) pension, your (state) healthcare and any other state benefits or services you may depend on. The state does not make provision for the future, it pays its historical "future debts" out of current cash flow.

That is why it is so vital to the governments of the future that population in the UK continues to grow, whether through immigration or through population growth. If the population ceased to grow, there would not be enough money left for the government to meet the commitments it made generations ago to people still around today.

And changing this is one of the best arguments for changing from a social democrat model of government to a libertarian one: future costs have to be properly funded. Just look at how many pension time bombs are ticking away because of the statist model today. It's not going to get any better by itself.

It's going to hurt some people, probably. But if we don't do it voluntarily and in a carefully-considered manner -- and soon! -- we could really see pensioners dying in the streets, either during my lifetime or those of my children.

Boo hoo: the Child Trust Fund

Predictably, "the left" are up in arms about the axing of the Child Trust Fund. Hopi Sen has leapt in with a predictably "witty" tweet, saying that "Osborne looks remarkably relaxed about cutting his trust fund, or did I mishear something".

Ha bloody ha, Mr Sen. That's right up there in the Liam Byrne school of comedy.

The reality of the situation is this: people can already save tax free for their kids, simply by opening up a savings account for children at their local bank. OK, so it loses its tax-free status two years earlier, but big fucking deal.

Oh, and the £250 pounds now and if you're a potential Labour voter an extra £250 pounds now is going to be worth probably half that when you're 18 and we're still paying for Gordon Brown's scorched earth.

Plus, that £250 or £500 now is not money that the government has to give to someone. They have to borrow money from someone else to dish it out. If you were on the bones of your arse and it was some stranger's birthday, would you go to the bank and borrow money just to give them a present? Or are you not clinically insane?

Proof, if it were needed...

Thanks to the Devil for pointing me at this excellent blog. I commend the whole article to you, but I wanted to highlight a couple of points:

Teenagers are not the source of knife crime, there have been teenagers since the dawn of the human race. They have been going outside in the evenings since the dawn of the human race. They have had knives since the dawn of the human race, before the dawn of the human race actually, but the dramatic rise in crime rates that we are worried about have only been going on since the end of World War 2. 50 years ago there where a lot more youths with knives walking about, but very very few of them using them to kill each other.

Perhaps you don't think that that shows an accurate picture? The definition of what is and what is not a crime does change all the time so you would have point. Literally thousands of things that where not crimes before now are, for example there has been one new crime a day since Labour came to power in 1997. So perhaps homicide rates would be better? There are fewer data, but the trend is identical.

So we are looking for something that had an impact on everybody in the country, but that affected the poor a lot more than the rich. something that happened just after World War 2 (the Home Office paper I linked to above dates it as 1954). Something big enough to change the very foundations of society

As the Devil says: I wonder what that could be?

Still think that safety net hammock is a good idea?